Portman scowled. “You know I’m fending off the media over this. They’re getting impatient. I need something to give them.”
“Surely the usual ‘We’re investigating all avenues’ will hold them for a while longer, won’t it?”
“Not much, not when it’s a Gardner who’s dead.” He turned as if to go, and Colin sighed inwardly in relief; he didn’t want to mention the computer files, not until they had something solid. But then Portman turned back. “How’s your new partner working out?”
Colin was glad now he hadn’t complained at the time. “Fine. She’s got good instincts, I think, and she’s working as hard and long as anyone.”
Portman nodded shortly, then turned and headed back to his office. Colin went back to the cubicle where Wilson was still working.
“That should hold him for a while, but-”
She didn’t look at him but threw up a hand to hush him. Startled, he shut up. He noticed then she was leaning forward, eyes glued to the screen, and he wasn’t quite sure she was breathing. He took his cue and kept quiet, and less than a minute later he heard her hiss under her breath a triumphant, “Yes!”
He stood up and took a step toward her. “Yes?”
“Got him!”
He stepped around to look at the screen, and saw the rows and rows of gibberish morph into lines of readable text. He let out a low whistle. “You go, girl,” he said.
She looked up at him and smiled. And he thought suddenly that was the kind of smile that started-or ended-wars. And that she was the kind of woman men fought them for. Or alongside. That scared him, and he backed away to a safer distance, retreating to the edge of his desk again. The moment he realized what he’d done, he swore silently at himself. You are not going to do this! he ordered himself.
She turned back to the screen and began to read. After a moment her smile faded, then a crease appeared in her forehead.
Uh-oh, he thought. “It didn’t work after all?”
“No, no, it did,” she said without looking up. “It’s just that…this makes no sense. Unless Franklin Gardner was going to some kind of dating service or something.”
Colin snorted inelegantly. “Not likely. Guys with his looks and money have to beat them off with sticks.”
“But he’s got lists of women here, broken down by month, with physical descriptions, and odd little notations like ‘jock’ or ‘schoolgirl.”’
He frowned. “Do they all have notes like that?”
She read further, and nodded. “Here’s one that says ‘girl next door.’ Oh, and here’s a nice one, ‘brunette and trashy.’ But the strange thing is, the physical descriptions are really vague.”
Colin went very still. “Vague how?”
“Like…well, maybe general is a better word. Like this one. ‘Blonde, five-two to five-six, voluptuous, hidden assets, innocent look.”
Colin stood up, slowly this time, in contrast to his racing thoughts.
“And this one,” she went on, her voice rising slightly, “this one’s sick! Listen to this! ‘Redhead, pigtails, freckles, no more than five feet, immature body, must look no more than twelve.’ What is this?”
“It sounds,” Colin said grimly, “like a shopping list.”
Even with the questionable help of Palmer it took them another hour to track down the reports-but only moments to match up the physical descriptions on four of the missing females to the list Darien had decoded on the computer. Palmer finally seemed to wake to the possibilities, and dug out three more reports that had been filed as open but not active. Those matched up with three more of the entries in Gardner ’s file.
Even more damning were the dates; it was Colin who first realized that in only one case was there more than five days between the date of Gardner ’s entry and the date of the missing persons report. And that one case was a sixteen-year-old who had already been gone several days, but hadn’t been missed due to her propensity for disappearing for days at a time anyway.
“Are all these girls runaways?” Darien asked Palmer, for the moment setting aside her dislike of the man.
“Yes,” Palmer said, apparently also focusing on business for now.
Colin gestured at the files. “They only got reported because somebody noticed they weren’t showing up at their usual hangouts anymore. Only one was reported by the family.”
“Not many care what happens to these kids,” Darien said. “I guess these are the lucky ones, to have friends with enough nerve to call the police.”
“Hey, there’s also the fact that these kids are runaways and don’t want to attract any attention,” Palmer said defensively.
“Palmer’s right,” Colin said. “And there are probably a dozen who never got reported for each one of these.”
And some that someone tried to report, Darien thought, but got shined on because it was just another runaway among hundreds, if not thousands. But she knew she’d gain nothing by speaking the thought. At least, not in front of Palmer.
But when he had to go back to his own cubicle to take a phone call, Waters opened the subject himself, saying thoughtfully, “I wonder how many on Gardner ’s list might be among those unreported missings?”
“You mean the girls who were shrugged off as just another street statistic?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand, which gave him points in her mind. “We’re not perfect. But there are only so many of us, and so many hours in a day. Things get kissed off.”
“Like girls who are addicts or thieves, or have taken to selling themselves on the street out of desperation, so their disappearance isn’t worth the effort?”
He looked at her silently for a long moment, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Then he spoke softly. “I had a cousin who ran away and disappeared into the wilds of Los Angeles. I didn’t expect L.A.P.D. to find her. Even then I knew L.A. was too big, and she was just one girl among thousands.”
She was surprised at the personal story, but couldn’t help asking, “What happened to her?”
“She turned up dead six months later.” He grimaced. “Ironically, not drugs, or killed by a john, or anything like that. She got hit by a car. Stupid, huh?”
“I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to say, she turned back to the matter at hand. “So, what do you think this means?” she asked. “Why would Franklin Gardner have a list of women who match the descriptions of missing runaways?”
Colin gave her a surprised look that gradually changed to one of sympathetic understanding. “Guess you wouldn’t hear much about this kind of thing out in the country.”
“What kind of thing?” she asked, trying not to sound defensive at being called, in the gentlest way, a country bumpkin of sorts. “And why did you say it looks like a shopping list?”
“Because it looks like Gardner was taking orders for particular types of girls, and then filling them.”
She felt a bit slow. “Orders?”
“Probably from some overseas client with a picky customer base. Some men are very particular about what they want.”
Darien ’s eyes widened, and suddenly she did feel very much a country bumpkin. “You mean…some sort of white slavery thing?”
“Some call it that, yes. We’re guessing these girls were kidnapped, very specifically, and sent off to be used as prostitutes somewhere where nobody asks questions.”
“My God,” Darien breathed, stunned. She’d heard of such things, of course, but they had always seemed the stuff of lurid documentaries, nothing she would ever encounter firsthand.
“What I don’t understand,” Waters said, “is why somebody like Franklin Gardner would be involved in something like that. With his family name, and they already have more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime.”